Dilemmas of the Week - GW6 (26/27)

Although I often say that international breaks don't usually produce many injuries, it was always quite likely that this latest, unprecedentedly extended one - 1.5x as long as any in the past, with 2x as many games! - might turn out to be an exception to that encouraging general rule. And so it has proven to be. We have had a fair old welter of 'injury flags' raised against some of our top FPL players over the last few weeks. 

At least the great majority of them have been yellow flags only, so... we might yet get away with it. But in many ways this is even worse: the uncertainty over whether players may yet make a miraculous recovery, pass a 'last-minute fitness test' and appear this weekend after all, or over whether they may only miss this one gameweek and we should probably try to find some way of hanging on to them (rather than shedding some squad-value with a quick sell-and-buy-back), all of this makes this week's selection decisions all the more perplexing. And we probably can't rely on managers to have been completely forthcoming about everyone's availability prospects in Friday's press conferences either.

For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

The Fantasy Premier League site itself now has a 'Player Availability' page (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.

I've recently discovered this additional resource, the weekly Predicted Lineups from Fantasy Football Edits. My longtime standby for this sort of news, Fantasy Footall Scout, does usually provide some explanatory commentary on its predictions, even including reminders of the key injury concerns, and sometimes also some discussion of possible alternate selections; so, if you like a bit more detail with your 'probable lineups' for the week, that could still be the preferable roundup to look at. But because FPL Edits is so stripped-down, it's rather more straightforwardly accessible, easier to scan through quickly; and I think it's also perhaps a tad more reliable with its expected formations and lineups, and a little quicker to update.

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 6?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

The following suffered injuries during or immediately prior to our last batch of league games on the weekend of 19th/20th September: Declan Rice, Patrick Kluivert, Lewis Dunk, Pascal Struijk, Reece James, Joao Pedro, Cole Palmer, Milan van Ewijk, Takehiro Tomiyasu, Matt Targett, Harry Wilson, Kobbie Mainoo, Marcus Rashford, Benjamin Sesko, Amar Dedic, Tino Livramento, Lewis Miley, Jacob Ramsey, and Pedro Porro.

And the following apparently suffered injuries while on international duty: Max Dowman, Kai Havertz, Ezri Konsa, Christos Tzolis, Matty Cash, David Brooks, Alex Scott, Mikkel Damsgaard, Jamie Gittens, Vitaly Mykolenko, Anan Khalaili, Cody Gakpo, Alexander Isak, Jeremy Jacquet, Nico O'Reilly, Antoine Semenyo, Patrick Dorgu, Noussair Mazraoui, Dan Ballard, Brian Brobbey, Micky van de Ven and Jan-Paul van Hecke. Meanwhile, Dango Ouattara, Yasin Ayari, and Neco Williams have apparently been suffering with illness. Nikola Milenkovic and Igor Jesus have also joined Forest's injury list in the last few days.

Erling Haaland also signalled that he needed to come off with 25 minutes left in Monday's rematch against Portugal. This was apparently due to 'extreme fatigue' rather than any particular injury - but that might still be a concern going into Sunday's match at Anfield.

On the face of it, this looks pretty catastrophic. But one suspects that many of the pre-break problems were probably exaggerated - if not entirely concocted - to excuse players from international duty, and will have completely disappeared this weekend. Most of the problems that arose during the Nations League games were catalogued as 'unspecified' or 'minor', and appear to be listed so far as only 'yellow flag' issues. However, Dorgu, Brobbey, and Ballard appeared to have suffered significant hamstring injuries, Havertz a serious thigh-muscle strain, and Damsgaard and Gakpo quite heavy ankle knocks - so, they're probably the most serious concerns.

I drafted this roundup yesterday, before all the press conference news was out - although most of that wasn't ultimately very helpful. Max Dowman, David Brooks, and Milan van Ewijk are apparently OK, and Cole Palmer is rumoured to be; several others might yet feature after a 'late fitness test'. But this weekend, we're really going into the Great Unknown.

Do we have any players who are dropped, suspended, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Taiwo Awoniyi is starting a three-match 'violent conduct' ban for throwing an elbow at De Cuyper in Coventry's last game. Phil Foden similarly starts a three-match ban for his rather less severe or clearcut 'retaliation' to Bruno Fernandes. Axel Disasi serves for the second instalment of a three-match ban for his high challenge on Ipswich's Jack Clarke.

Abdul Fatawu is serving a one-match ban for picking up two yellow cards in the last game against Everton.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

There's a reason why Spurs, Fulham, and Coventry are anchored at the bottom of the table at the moment, and, while they may have the potential to turn things around slightly (curiously, I'd currently fancy Coventry to have the strongest chance of starting to achieve some better success, because they at least seem to pose some attacking threat), I wouldn't go near any of them with a bargepole for a while yet. Fulham are - bizarrely - the 'darlings of the week' in FPL-land (with some folks even blowing their Wildcards to treble-up on them!!), because naive managers believe the FDR assessments that the three promoted teams up next should be 'easy games' for them; they won't be - on recent form, Fulham aren't going to have any 'easy' games this season; and I can see them losing all three of these. Crystal Palace, I'm sorry to say, look the worst of the rest, and I wouldn't be touching any of their players either.

A lot of folks online have been speculating that Manchester City may suffer a collapse in morale in the wake of the announcement of the League's verdicts against the club on its multiple charges of financial deceptions in the first half of the Mansour era. As I discussed in detail yesterday, I think it's still pretty unlikely that any sanctions can be implemented against the club this season; and if City's owners choose to fight the case through the civil courts, we might not get any final resolution of the controversy this decade. For now, players, coaches, and fans seem to be accepting the club's official position that the charges are unfair, the verdicts incorrect, and that they are confident they will eventually be exonerated. That may seem far-fetched to many football fans; but, unfortunately, the League's case doesn't look at all watertight, and I doubt if it will hold up in a proper court. So,... I don't envisage any immediate panic within the City camp which might have a detrimental impact in performances on the pitch.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Well, after such a long break from full team training with their clubs, early season form is out of the window: we can't really say with confidence how anyone is going to perform this weekend, or maybe over the next gameweek or two either; we're essentially starting the season from scratch again (but without even the benefit of any pre-season training to get the players used to the club's tactical systems, or friendly matches to give us an inkling of who might be looking likely to most thrive in those systems).

So, I wouldn't be making any elective transfers this week. Some of the 'minor' injuries we take a chance on this week may prove to be more long-term. Some injuries may not even be disclosed before the FPL deadline. And.... I fear there's a grave danger that unregarded 'niggles' or fatigue issues picked up on international duty, combined with the shock of the much greater intensity of Premier League football and training, may lead to a rash of further injuries over the next week or two. (This is why I counselled that it was a bad idea to play the Wildcard over the break in Gameweek 6, because we just wouldn't know who was going to be playing well at this point, who was going to be fit, or who was going to stay fit during this tricky first week or two back in club football.) Thus, I think there's a strong argument for rolling transfers (and saving up the Wildcard, if you still have it) this week, in anticipation of likely greater problems a little way ahead. 

That may mean we have to take a lot of chances on injury-flagged players, and possibly end up without a full starting eleven this week. Not the end of the world; these things happen. Almost everyone's in the same boat (even some of those who played their Wildcards: they're caught between the players they really wanted having yellow-flags against them this week and the players they might get instead being probably very inferior alternatives if the prime picks are available to play again next week!).

The one player who did get my covetous juices flowing in Gameweek 5 (but then, I'd been coveting him since the World Cup, I knew that he was likely to be one of the hottest new arrivals in the league this year) is Villa's Johan Manzambi, who was immediately outstanding on his first league start for them.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!